“Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.”

Here's the best way to put it: the more time you have to spend on your finances, the less time you have for everything else. If you like to take advantage of bonuses and promotions from new credit cards and end up with 20 cards, how do you keep track? Do you log into the 20 websites daily to check your account balance and make sure no one has use them? How about the rest? Your bank accounts? Direct Deposit? IRA? 401K? Mortgage? Money Market? Student Loans? Security and Brokerage? Utilities?

The goal of this article is to introduce a few suggestions to the reader on possible ways to shorten your time spent on managing your finances, and gain some free time to do other things.

The following cook book approach is presented to help you simplify your finances - and of course, give you the free time to enjoy that opera or boxing match.

1. Get a copy of MS Money or Quickens
   The cost should be about $50 to $100, or you can wait for a sale. you can download activities from your credit cards, banks, and other investment companies. This will save you the countless hours each week of going to each site. You can also set up automatic bill pays as well as alerty when the accounts get above or below a certain threshold. This is truly one of your best investments.
2. Change credit card due dates so they coincide
   For example, it can be arranged that all your credit cards are dues on the same date of the month. You can do this easily by calling your credit card companies and request a date change on your accounts.
3. Consolidate your credit cards
   If you have more than one credit card from the same company, you can often call them and have the credit limits consolidated - i.e., if you have a $3000 limit, a $5000 limit, and a $8000 limit credit card, all from Citibank, you can call to have combine the cards into a single credit card with a $16000 credit limit. The percent utilization of your credit limit does not change and your credit score will not be affected. You won't lose track of cards this way.
4. Direct payments for your utilities
   Most utility companies allow you to have your monthly payments automated. They will typically allow you to get alerts on your utilities if your usage for the month exceeds a certain amount. This will save you the check writing and mailing trouble as well as provide you with easy alerts.
5. Secure your login and password
   A program such as KeePass or similar will serve this need very well. This will allow you to set really strong encryption passwords without the hassle of actually have to remember them - remember how many places you or the same password or worse yet, forget them?

Next time you are able to check all your financial accounts, just think, briefly, how much leisure time you have gain…or don't even have to think about it at all.